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AWS Bare Metal Instances

0

Hi,

I would like to create and use a bare metal instance with GPUs. The documentation states that I have to go to EC2 and create a dedicated host by choosing an instance such as m5, for example.

My problem is that when I create a dedicated host, the interface shows me "vCPUs", which I don't understand. Normally, if my instance is bare metal, I should have real physical CPUs and not vCPUs.

So I'd like to know if this is the real procedure for accessing a bare metal host (and not a VM) -and one with GPUs-.

Thanks for your help,

Topics
ComputeManagement & Governance
Tags
Amazon EC2AWS Service Catalog
Language
English
stellabitchebe
asked 3 months ago1367 views
2 Answers
2
Accepted Answer

Amazon EC2 Metal instances provide you with physical CPUs, not virtualized CPUs. Metal instances are not virtualized; they do not run under a hypervisor like non-Metal instances do. We do use the same "vCPU" terminology in our APIs and the EC2 Console even with Metal instances, but rest assured you will have full access to all CPU resources.

Just a point of clarity - EC2 Dedicated Hosts are different from Metal instances. EC2 Dedicated Hosts are intended to run multiple EC2 instances on the same physical machine; you allocate a Dedicated Host and then can assign EC2 instances to that host. Dedicated Hosts are not EC2 instances themselves; you cannot run workloads on them or access them until you assign instances to them. Metal instances, on the other hand, are EC2 instances mapped to entire physical hosts that cannot be subdivided into multiple EC2 instances. (You can even run your own hypervisor on Metal instances if you like, which is something you cannot do with non-Metal instances.)

AWS
EXPERT
MichaelFischer
answered 3 months ago
profile picture
EXPERT
Oleksii Bebych
reviewed a month ago
  • stellabitchebe
    3 months ago

    Thank you @MichaelFischer! So, to allocate bare metal instances without going through the EC2 Dedicated Host, what should I do, please? Which instance type should I choose?

  • stellabitchebe
    3 months ago

    I think I found them. They are *.metal, right? e.g., m5d.metal. But one interrogation remains: are there such metal instances with GPUs? I can't find some on EC2

  • MichaelFischer EXPERT
    3 months ago

    We offer two GPU-enabled instance types today in bare metal configurations: G4dn.metal and G5g.metal.

  • stellabitchebe
    3 months ago

    Yes, I had already found them. Many thanks!

1

Hello,

I think that you want to read https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/security-design-of-aws-nitro-system/the-components-of-the-nitro-system.html especially the "Nitro hypervisor" section to understand why AWS still speaks of vCPU with bare metal instances.

If you are not familiar with Nitro, you may want to start here: https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/nitro/

Best,

Didier

profile pictureAWS
EXPERT
Didier_Durand
answered 3 months ago

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